3ds Max 2008 instability?

[robkar97]

Hi,

 

I am curious to hear about how you people are finding 3ds Max 2008.

 

I have purchased and installed 3ds Max 2008 but I have to say I am very disappointed with its stability. The last week 3ds Max has crashed 4-6 times A DAY, sometimes with a warning and sometimes by not responding.

 

It can happen pretty much anytime, once even when I tried to save a batch render as a bat file.

 

I use Windows Vista Home professional, 2 Ghz, 3 GB ram, 256 mb GPU - everything brand new and with updated drivers.

 

The scene is 700 000 faces, all mr Arch + design materials, nothing fancy.

 

All the best

Robert Karlsson

i2 STUDIOS, Sweden

http://www.i2studios.com

[Arnold Sher]

i have to say that all my friends have been complaining exactly about the same thing... I guess we will hold till the service pack arrives...

[kippu]

no crashes here but have not tried batch rendering

[robkar97]

Hi Brian!

"Hardware diagnostics" sounds intriguing :-) How would I go about doing that?

[ihabkal]

I am sure it is windows Vista or a fuzzy DirectX driver. Update the graphics card driver to the absolute latest.

[Billabong]

IM running Xp x64, with 2008. And I havent been able to properly import and fbx file without a crash yet

[WAcky]

I was having a lot of crashes after opening up a max 9 file and re-saving to max 2008.

 

I was so fed up with it that i just stripped down the file, exported the geometry excluding lights, cameras and foliage.

 

Imported it into max 2008, re textured the whole scene from scratch. Set up my lighting and settings from scratch and im yet to have an unexpected crash.

 

I have found a bit of an interesting "bug" if i can call it that. When i cancel a render that is still pre-processing max can leak about 800mb of memory. This has only happened once or twice. But if i try and render again then max will just hang. If i see that its memory leaking, ill save and restart max. Works for me.

 

Im using vista ultimate 64 with max 2008 64 bit. Quad core goodness is an absolute dream now. Doing renders in 5 mins that my old box couldnt even pre-process without crashing.

 

Update your drivers and if you have the time, try going about re-making the file in the way i did. Unless it's a fresh 2008 file...

[robkar97]

Hi!

 

Interesting... I was indeed working on a file I had created in 3ds Max 9. I'll keep my fingers crossed this kind of frequent crashes will disappear when doing the entire work form scratch in 3ds Max 2008.

 

I too has had problem with the memory management when rendering with mental ray. Doing the rendering as a netrender job using Backburner without rendered frame window (and then closing down the initial 3ds Max instance) solved this. It went from 1400 mb of memory use to appx 800 mb and the "black buckets" disappeared.

 

Best

Robert